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Narayan Venkatasubramanyan author page

3 puzzles by Narayan Venkatasubramanyan
with Constructor comments

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312/6/20084/14/20223
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11.551441%
Narayan Venkatasubramanyan
POW Thu 4/14/2022
STAGEEGOTPERP
EAGERGREATAPES
WHATAGOODBOYAMI
EOSAIGLUG
REPASTSDECANTS
SCOTTISHPOET
USTAUNAFLU
SPINNINGWHEEL
RUEOVIORES
BRASSSECTION
GYRATESODDSOCK
LASYONBAE
FROMSTEMTOSTERN
HADAHUNCHOHYAY
ADENDDAYPASTA

NARAYAN: For over a decade, I lived the life of a quasi-single Indian-American dad in Texas with a live-in Chinese mother-in-law (no, this isn't the failed pilot for a sitcom!). Soon after she moved in, I was banished from the kitchen. I was happy to oblige because she was a brilliant cook who soon learned to cater to my Indian tastes and vegetarian restrictions. Her English wasn't very good, but it was far better than my Mandarin, so that became our medium of broken communication.

One day, she offered to make "calm" soup for dinner. I had no idea what that meant, but I figured it had to be good ... but even after soup was served, I couldn't see what made it (or me) "calm". After a few more instances of this, I realized that she was actually saying "com", not "calm". Of course, that makes even less sense. She was puzzled by my questions about the contents of the soup, so she brought me a can of com. That's when it hit me: between her poor command of the language, her less-than-perfect eyesight, and poor kerning on the can label, she had misread "corn" as "com". And a therne was bom!

I shared this theme with Ashish, and we batted around possibilities like "burn" for "bum", "garner" for "gamer", etc. Once we had enough fodder for a puzzle, Ashish came up with a bit of brilliance for the revealer: "from stem to stern" offered a clean way to tie it all together.

Sun 8/30/2009 LITERALLY SO
ADAMYAPATRHOMBEGGS
FINEORAMAASPCALEAK
TAKEOUTOFCONTEXTLAZE
AGATHASMONKDIESIRAE
SNAPOLAASS
BLOODLESSREVOLUTION
GOADMERCKIDASTOA
ENCORETHEMISSINGLINK
LITREDEMINASEC
ITIROOTSTHOMMCAN
DOCTORSWITHOUTBORDERS
EUROAREAINALLNEA
STRATIRNAEAGAN
SPARENOEXPENSEADVICE
EKGSOTBTONALINTR
EATSSHOOTSANDLEAVES
ANTXOOSPAR
LOMILOMINLERATLANTA
IRANLEMONDROPCOOKIES
DAZEERASEOSCARINRE
SLEDNEXUSSASSYNANA
Sat 12/6/2008
VIEWROAMASPEN
ESCAPEKEYSHAVE
SACHABARONCOHEN
TOEDAYOOAT
ORTSASPIRIN
DONEETGINONE
WINOSREARTPKE
EDAMCENSEHELD
LADAAROSEEDEL
LSATTERIRAISE
EEROCASTERNS
STEPDADAHEM
OWLELALTAU
THREELITTLEPIGS
NOOILSCHEDULEA
TRIALMHOSREEF
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